1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to electronic devices and, more particularly, to the removal of heat dissipated by the operation of such electronic devices on printed circuit boards.
2. Description of the Related Art
The current trend in electronics manufacturing and assembly is to utilize more electronic devices with less or miniaturized hardware in order to provide more services to the user in more compact structures. However, miniaturization creates demanding thermal environments because the electronic devices, such as personal computer card ("PC card") assemblies, that are used in these host miniaturized hardware structures dissipate significant amounts of heat during operation. Conventional PC card assemblies are not designed for such demanding temperature environments and, as a result, their use and operation are adversely affected. If the temperature environment exceeds a threshold limit, the PC cards will "bum out" and become inoperable.
Presently, the adverse effects of the thermal environment caused by miniaturization are controlled by providing greater separation of the PC cards on a standard, less thermally dense parent board. As is well-known in the art, the standard parent board is a flat, rectangular structure. However, a shortcoming of using this structure is that greater separation of the PC cards results in a lower power density. In fact, large parent board structures do not employ more than 1 or 2 PC cards, in part because of this limitation. For example, the power density of a typical similar arrangement is only approximately 0.05 W/in.sup.3, whereas a more densely packed arrangement could have a power density exceeding 0.2 W/in.sup.3. In other words, maximum thermal dissipation cannot be obtained in the most compact structure.